


Say You'll Stay [With Me Tonight]

by inkbadger



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 5 Things, Canon Typical Violence, Cuddling, Everyone Has Issues, Hunk-centric, Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Lance, Nightmares, Other, Panic Attacks, Platonic Hunk things, Samoan Hunk, VERY Brief Mentions, angsty, bonding moments galore, gratuitous references to anxiety/depression/ptsd, it's mostly Hunk looking for someone to cuddle okay, mentions of tattoos/traditional polynesian tattoos, nothing but platonic anything here folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 19:23:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17924837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkbadger/pseuds/inkbadger
Summary: But on nights like these, no amount of baking in the middle of the night or reminiscing about home is enough to ward off his demons.He shudders, hand to his mouth as he makes a low noise in his throat. The dark looms around him as he struggles to sit up, air still stuck in his lungs as he frantically kicks off the blankets that are suddenly trapping him. He can’t breathe, the lingering remnants of a battlefield and the frantic efforts he’d made to carry a bleeding Keith back to his lion.The silence is too much on his own.or-4 times Hunk found solace in someone else and the 1 time someone else came to him.





	Say You'll Stay [With Me Tonight]

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know why I wrote this other than Hunk's an angel who doesn't get enough love and I'm an angst queen. Sorry?

* * *

 1.

He can’t breathe.

The dark shadows of the rooms always seemed to close in on him during the nights, once the chaos of the day has been temporarily put to rest. Days of long battles, dodging Galra fire and fighting for his life in the middle of empty space, voids between planets illuminated by sparks and explosions. And then, to stumble- battered, bruised, weary to his very core- out of his lion and pretend that it didn’t happen as he peels himself out of his yellow armor. As he catalogues each of the new bruises, cuts and scars that litter his dark skin, the now tempered tattoo that adorns the flesh of his shoulder. A small piece of home, regardless of how far he is.

He can’t just brush off everything that happens, like Lance. Laugh and twist his lips into a smile and use humor to cope with the war they’ve been roped into. Isn’t able to dissociate from it like Keith, log endless hours that drag on into the false dawn as he barrels through the training deck and wreaks havoc to still his thoughts. Won’t bury himself in a dogged hunt for answers like Pidge, sequestered away in her room with only her datapads and determination for company. Refuses to push it all away and even think of it like Shiro, no matter how strong he is during the daylight hours. Doesn’t know enough about Allura or Coran to know what they use to cope with the war- perhaps they don’t.

He likes to pretend, sometimes, that he’s alright. Will pull away the armor and force himself to go to the kitchen, mechanically pull pots and pans out of their places and pretend that he’s back home with his mothers in their kitchen, cooking on a lazy Sunday with the warm ocean winds blowing in the open windows.

But on nights like these, no amount of baking in the middle of the night or reminiscing about home is enough to ward off his demons.

He shudders, hand to his mouth as he makes a low noise in his throat. The dark looms around him as he struggles to sit up, air still stuck in his lungs as he frantically kicks off the blankets that are suddenly trapping him. He can’t breathe, the lingering remnants of a battlefield and the frantic efforts he’d made to carry a bleeding Keith back to his lion.

The silence is too much on his own.

Lance’s room is easy.

Hunk steps over the few loose shirts and scattered bits and bobs that comprise something of a wall around the bed in the corner of the room, easing himself into the warm sheets as a small, vulnerable noise breaks from his throat.

Lance shifts easily, blue eyes bleary as he immediately opens his arms to accept him as Hunk burrows in, still trembling. The pattern is familiar, comforting, if being a while since they had done such a thing. The last months before, while still on Earth.

“’s wrong?” he asks softly, into Hunk’s neck as he twines his hands behind his head, a leg thrown over Hunk’s hip as he does his best to assimilate himself into the larger of the two.

He inhales deeply, shakily, for a moment believes that he could say the words that haunt him but realizes he can’t as a broken sob escapes instead.

“Shhhh.” Lance coos, soothes as his hands card through Hunk’s hair. “’s okay.”

It isn’t, not really, but Lance always knows how to dull down the roaring of his fears into something quiet as they slowly doze off again, Lance’s hands never stilling as Hunk’s eyes close.

 

* * *

 2.

 

The planet Keith and Hunk have been stranded on is not one that Keith finds ideal. Nor Hunk, really, but given that he’s been run through the shoulder with a Galra blade, he finds his thoughts on other things. His heart beats an unsteady rhythm in time with the slow bleeding of the wound, and he’s leaning his head back against the cool stone of the shadowed outcropping Keith had managed to get him to, trying to focus on something, _anything_ , that isn’t the crimson he can see out of the corner of his eye. Nausea crawls at the back of his throat, sick and acidic as he shifts uncomfortably.

“Hunk, we’ve got to get your armor off so I can look at your shoulder.”

There’s Keith now, returning from whatever it was that he did when he wandered off without a word, fingers curled around his dark blade. For some reason, the thought was more amusing than it usually was, and he couldn’t help the short bark of laughter that he let loose.

Keith’s brows are furrowed, deeper than usual as he sinks gracefully into a crouch next to his side, hands moving to his shoulder near delicately. He bites back the first noise of discomfort as Keith struggles for a moment with the clasp that hold the shoulder plating to the rest of his torso, knocking the back of his head against the rock and looking skyward. However, the second touch is worse, and he can’t bite back the low whine as the suit is peeled away from the broken skin, quiet apologies from Keith lost in the thick haze. He thinks he might have drifted for a while- the next time he feels present is as Keith is tying the knot on a makeshift bandage provided by Hunk’s already mangled black undersuit, the jolt of pain and adrenaline surging through his veins.

“Sorry.” Keith mutters, finally dropping onto the ground next to him, exhausted. Honestly, Hunk can’t blame him. They had barely managed to escape the warship in time, Keith hurling them both into an escape pod and ejecting them toward the nearest planet as their team and lions continued the fight without them. There’s silence for several moments, before Keith finally shifts.

“Didn’t know you had a tattoo.” He says quietly.

“Got it before I left home.” Hunk says, and there’s fondness there as he remembers the pride in his mothers’ eyes as he’d asked them about looking for someone to ink his first tattoo. “Didn’t have time to do it the traditional way, but there was a master in town who learned how to use modern tattoo machines.”

He’s breathing heavy, grunts as he jostles his shoulder the wrong way and has to blink back the instinctive tears his body has decided to generate in response to the pain. He finds himself leaning into Keith, the other paladin sitting on his uninjured side and on guard as he always is.

“I miss home.” He says eventually, hating how silent this planet is. No birds, no signs of wildlife, nothing but the sound of the blood in his ears and Keith’s quiet breathing next to him. “The sound of the ocean coming in the window at night mostly.”

Keith doesn’t say anything, not for a long while. Hunk continues to say whatever comes to his mind, anything to take his mind off of the lightheaded feeling that sends his surroundings spiralling when he glances over to Keith.

“’nd I had to carry you back to the castle less ‘an a month ago.” He slurs, chest tight as he remembers the ashen tone to his skin, the way that the blood didn’t seem to have a beginning nor and end, just a sea of crimson staining his hands and jolting his heart into overdrive because no one was going to die on his watch-

He’d leaned into Keith at some point, eyes hooded as he finishes with a quiet sound.

“’m jus’ glad ‘m not ‘lone.” He says breathily into Keith’s shoulder, feeling more and more boneless the longer they sit. “’m glad…”

It’s the last thing he remembers before he’s being spat out by a pod, his head spinning and an odd gap in his memory he doesn’t know how to fill and Keith doesn’t seem inclined to explain.

 

* * *

 3.

 

With the name of paladin comes hefty responsibilities, and as such, it isn’t uncommon for one or more paladins to be planet-side while the remaining stay on the Castle of Lions. This time, Hunk and Pidge are managing the Castle with Coran- the latter whom has vanished somewhere into one of the control rooms to perform maintenance. And who knows when he’ll show up after that- sometimes it takes a couple of days before the Altean advisor reappears.

Personally, Pidge thinks he takes the opportunity to drink some of the nunvill stock that was left behind back in the day and go on a bender, but considering no one’s been able to prove it, the theory still stands.

Pidge, on the other hand, is working on who knows what- probably still on the hunt for her missing family and worked herself into a coma again. All Hunk knows is that the quiet is starting to get to him again and despite the cheerful illumination of the lights in the hallway, he can feel something stirring under his skin that he needs to move and do something or he’ll go mad. And so he wanders the halls, a mug of something vaguely tea-like in nature clasped between his hands and his anxieties running through his mind like a mantra.

When he finally finds her, it’s between the Green Lion’s front paws, a small nest of miscellaneous blankets and shredded bits of sentries and the like scattered around her like a halo. He knows she’s engrossed in her work, so much so that even as he sits next to her, she barely offers him a grunt of acknowledgement. He doesn’t mind it, content to watch the numbers of code blur across the screen as her fingers move with utter confidence across the keys, a heavy staccato that soothes him more than he’d like to admit.

They don’t share words like this. Hunk knows that eventually, Pidge will surface from whatever thought had prompted the mad scramble to put concepts down into reality and try to explain most of the coding to him- despite his rather broad knowledge of engineering, code was one of the things that continued to elude him. But for now, this is enough. A steady warmth of another human being next to him, and something other than his thoughts, his fears to focus on.

 

* * *

 4.

 

He’s sagging in his bonds, everything hazy at the seams of his mind as someone grabs his hair and wrenches his head back, neck screaming at him in pain as the burns from the wire they hooked him with in the first-place flare. He doesn’t want to look at the mess that the tops of his thighs have become, doesn’t want to look at the burns that have been etched into the flesh of his chest and belly by electric whips, doesn’t want to see the jagged curves of the knives that they’re currently heating over a small blue flame, gleaming eyes boring into his own as he struggles.

Hunk doesn’t know how long it’s been. Only that the circle of pain hasn’t ended yet, and that his only thought is that he has to make it just a little further- until the rest of the paladins can find him and get him out of this place. They’ve managed to find one another before, and knowing the paladins, they will find him again. But it’s hard to repeat the mantra in his head while the heated blade is sunken into his thigh, whispered threats and half formed questions of where Voltron is spilling from the lips of his captors. Hard to keep his eyes open as they flutter closed of their own volition, on their own agenda as his brain checks out and the rest of him is left behind to clean up the mess.

He’s not conscious when they do come, blowing the door open with such force that the seat he’s chained to shudders beneath him. And then there are gentle hands pulling at him, soft words that spill from those he knows and trusts. And despite the inability to open his eyes or speak, his heart eases at the background noise that accompanies the paladins as they carry him back to the lions, the bond he shares with the Yellow Lion thrumming as he finally surrenders to unconsciousness.

 

.

 

Of course, nothing is ever easy when it comes to dealing with trauma.

The first night after being released from the healing pod, he shuffles his way into the kitchen with shaking hands and a fragile heart, near desperate to make use of his inability to sleep. But the moment he sees the silver of the knives, his mind shuts down and he turns into a frightened deer, bolting from the place he had found solace and blindly following the twists and turns of the halls with scornful laughter ringing in his ears.

Eventually, he finds himself on one of the upper decks where there’s nothing but open windows to the skies and the faintest of lights coming from small crystals in the floor that catch the light of the stars, his heart in his throat and the inexplicable feeling that he’s trapped himself. He ends up pacing, counting the steps as he runs shaking hands through his hair and tries to rationalize everything, anything that’s happened since they made it to space. He’s shaking to the point he can barely walk, his chest heaving as he whirls at the sound of the doors opening, revealing a worried looking Shiro. Shiro, who probably hasn’t slept more than a handful of hours a night, plagued by his own demons from the Arena and Haggar. Shiro, who is walking toward him with the caution one might treat a frightened and wounded animal in the wild. Hunk supposes, in some deep, rational part of his mind, that he does look like a wounded animal.

And he supposes, that under the circumstances, bursting into tears was his body’s way of letting him know that it was time to sit down before he passed out. So as his legs gave out beneath him, he could hardly fault Shiro for not making it to his side in time to steady him as he choked on nothing, unable to suck in a breath between jolting sobs that poured from him like a fountain. Unable to do anything but allow the elder to join him, carefully offering comfort in what way he was able as he ran feather light hands down his sides, murmuring words that he couldn’t make out as he leaned into the touch- craving it after so many battles of unfamiliar touches and painful reminders that this wasn’t home, and there would be no mercy from their enemies.

He does, eventually, calm. When the sobs have quieted to hiccups, and all he is able to croak is some semblance of either thanks or an apology to Shiro for seeing him like this, completely spent and leaning into him with the coordination of a drunk in a back alley. It means more to him than any words could convey, but Shiro seems to just _know_. So as he leans further into the soothing warmth that is Shiro, he feels how he eventually is shifted onto his back as a dozy koala mimic, mumbling something about nothing as Shiro carries him back down to his room, gently settling him onto his bed before joining him.

Hunk pulls him in, fully intent on leeching the comfort offered as well as offer some form of his own before Shiro inevitably leaves once he’s asleep. He won’t fool himself into thinking otherwise- it’s common knowledge that Shiro just doesn’t sleep well. Period, end of conversation.

So when Hunk wakes to find him still curled next to him, there’s something soft that settles in him at the sight of Shiro’s white forelock splayed over his pillow and the drool that soaked his shirt at some point in the evening.  

 

 

 

* * *

+1

 

Shiro is gone.

Shiro is gone and Hunk feels the entire castle beginning to crumble and fray at the seams. Keith is nearly beyond coherent words at this point, constantly in the training deck or with Pidge on the command deck hunting for any signs of Shiro. Lance is quiet, nearly a ghost with the way he drifts in and out of the rooms in the castle. Pidge is even more obsessed with finding Shiro than she ever seemed to be finding her father and brother, but then again, they’ve done all they can for the moment on that front. Now they need to find their leader, the Black Paladin and the head of Voltron.

Hunk finds himself coaxing the others back into some kind of pretend normalcy. He cooks the meals, hunts them all down and drags them to the table if they have to, _but they are going to eat whether they like it or not._ He finds himself with Lance nearly glued to his side, to Keith asking him to spar on the nights where none of them seem able to find sleep, to Pidge almost begging him to double and triple check her coding to ensure that it’s perfect. Even Allura and Coran seem to be looking to him for some kind of sign that everything is going to be okay. But quite frankly, Hunk doesn’t get it. He’s the least capable of holding everything together- not while he’s still haunted in the wee hours of the night by his demons whispering in his ears.

So it is a surprise when he jolts awake to find cool hands grabbing onto him like a lifeline in the middle of the night, blinking away the lingering afterimages to find Lance clinging to his back, shoulders shaking as he tries to muffle his tears into him. But Hunk is nothing but gentle as he tugs Lance in front of him, spooning him and rubbing his shoulder absently as he soothes the lankier back into rest. He is almost there himself when he finds tentative hands pulling back the covers, blinks and finds a dark eyed Keith staring back at him in near desperation. So he mutters something he thinks is friendly and half-heartedly pats the bunk behind him, and that is that. Warm on both fronts and warily wondering if Pidge is next, he almost misses the sound of his door opening and the girl herself entering, pillow and blanket clutched in her hands as she invites herself into bed, burrowing between Keith and the wall and settling decisively.

He half expects, in the back of his mind, that Allura or even Coran join them, but it appears it isn’t the case. So it remains, the four of them hunkered in a bunk certainly not meant for more than two, grieving and seeking comfort amongst one another, hiding from themselves if only for one night. And yet, he can’t help but think that amid all of the tragedy, something feels right about being where they are now.

And perhaps Shiro is missing, but in the soft sounds of breathing and warmth, he feels at ease.

They’ll find him and bring him home.


End file.
